GroupWise: No more Software Distribution Directory….

Check out the changes being made to the Software Distribution Directories in Windermere. Provide your use case and expertise to help direct the final solution.

As Windermere is being developed, there are a few topics and engineering choices that we would like to share with the community and request their feedback and insight. We recognize that change can be difficult, but we also recognize that in order to move our products and solutions forward, change is inevitable. We also recognize that the GroupWise community contains a wealth of experience, insight and constructive advice on how best to make these changes. We request your expertise and evaluation.

The topic today is removing the Software Distribution Directory. As the administration console is being rewritten, we have the opportunity to improve this particular aspect of the overall GroupWise system. The engineers have written a description of the current use cases, the changes being implemented and the risk and tradeoffs that are inevitable. Please take a look at this document and provide your feedback, experience and suggestions. We want to make this improvement as beneficial and pain free as possible. We want you to confirm our assumptions and challenge our conclusions.

Here are the conclusions…but please read the entire article written by Dan Christensen.

Disclaimer: This content is not supported by Novell. It was contributed by a community member and is published "as is." It seems to have worked for at least one person, and might work for you. But please be sure to test it thoroughly before using it in a production environment.

Much of the benefit of the SDD is for the client side or large GW systems, and we don’t really fit either of them. Our system is relatively small so updates are easy, and we use ZCM (and Zen before that) to push client updates. I also say no loss.

From the experience of many Groupwise installations, I can say that no one Groupwise administrator uses the SDD.
During an update, I always copy the ofviews manually in the Post Office Strutkur. Mostly I distribute the *. Dc files manually to ensure all components of the current Groupwise Dictornary have to dispositions. Not an error message when you start the Post Office Agent to get the SDD I run with yet.
In large Groupwise installation, ZCM / Zen comes to client update in action.
By using Citrix / VMware View environment, the update of GroupWise client software is simplified just event.
I will not miss the SDD in Windermere, and I hope that we will soon need no more Groupwise client and the WebAccess client completely detached.
greetings Andreas

I sort of use it with the bump numbers to update our clients here. It’s a shame that setupip is still a 16 bit program cause I’d like to use it still. I created a work around with a self-extracting zip file and auto install with an autoit program to provide similar function. Just giving my .02.

Not sure what you mean. I use SetupIP with GW2012-SP1 to update machines from XP to Windows 7 SP1. In addition using the Easy-Install tool by Tommy Mikkelson available from Open Horizons. SetupIP can be deployed WITHOUT having Administrator rights to the workstation

If you are using ZCM 10 or 11, there is a nice way to distribute and install the GW2012 client. All you do is deploy 3 files to the workstation, extract the client install files and launch the install.bat file. 4 Install Actions in a ZCM Bundle, can even add the Launch Action to use 1 Icon to deliver, install and Run the GroupWise application.